"No, it does no good," said he. "I don't want to do any good. I just choose to say what I am saying, and what I say, I assure you, is no exaggeration of what I feel--it does not even do justice to what I feel. One thing I have misstated, or it was but a mood of the moment. I said I was broken; I am nothing of the sort. I never did a better day's work than to-day. But I don't want to say these things again, and I have no intention of doing so. I beg you also never to refer to them. But I choose just this once to say what my feeling towards them is. I tried, indeed I tried my best, to forgive them, but I can't. I can no more now conceive forgiving them than a blind man can conceive the colour of that rose. I loved them both, and in proportion as my love for them was strong, so is my hate for them." He paused a moment. "That is all," he said. "I wanted you to know that, and to be under no misconception as to what I felt. Let us never talk of either of them again. I have already given all necessary orders in London, and all I have to do here is to send back all wedding presents. I will do that to-night." He looked at her a moment as she stood there with hands that trembled and eyes that were dim, pitying him to the bottom of her kind, loving soul, but imploring him, so he felt, not to be like this. And the pity reached and touched him, though the entreaty did not. "Poor mother," he said. "I am sorry for you, indeed I am that. We have not kissed yet, or shaken hands." But Mrs. Home, gentle and loving and pitiful as she was, could not do quite as he asked, though her hands and her lips yearned for him. "No, Philip," she said; "but with whom do I shake hands, and whom do I kiss? You, the Philip who is my son, or the man who has said this? Indeed, dear, I know you well, and it is not you who have spoken." He looked at her steadily. "Yes, it is I who have spoken," he said. "This is now your son, the man who has said these things. Do you cast me off, too?" Unfair, unjust as the words were, she felt no pang of resentment with him, telling herself that he was not himself. And, whatever he was, her relationship to him, she knew, could never be altered. If he was lying in the condemned cell for some brutal murder, whatever he had done or been could never make any difference to that. He knew that, too, his best self knew it, and it was to his best self she spoke. "You know I can never cast you off," she said, "and those were wild words but they are unsaid. Here is my hand, my darling, and here are my lips. You want me also never to say any more about it. I will not; but I must say this about you--that you will not always feel like this. I know you will not. And when the change comes, tell me. You cannot take that belief away from me." He kissed her, holding both her hands in his, but his face did not relax. "Poor mother!" he said again.